Transgender Book Reviews

The Angel and the Perverts
Fiction by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus
Translated by Anna Livia
Original French edition 1930, 227 pages
New York University Press

Capsule: to the gay and lesbian salons of early 20th Century Paris comes an elusive, brilliant and nearly mythical hermaphroditic young person who acerbically observes his/her place in life. Moving between male and female roles with ease, he/she finally finds something in life to be passionate about.

Full review:

One is soon aware in this novel who the perverts in the title are, but the angel isn't revealed until the end.

Marion is a person between the sexes, without the specific sexual equipment of either. And so he/she is an egg without a yolk, a non-fertile being, a hermaphrodite. As a child, he/she is protected by his mother, hated by his father, and only learns of his/her unusualness after leaving home and attending school. Schoolmates can be cruel!

And yet Marion is brilliant and attains the only respect possible by getting the best grades.

The novel leapfrogs to Marion's desultory adult lifestyle as an unrecognized ghost writer of plays, books and legal papers. His/her indeterminate body allows him/her to mix with lesbians as a woman and in gay society as a man, careful to hide his/her game. In the book's descriptions of these encounters, one can feel the author (who left a straight marriage for lesbian relationships) commenting on the milieu she joined. That milieu consisted of the rich, the creative and the physically attractive (shades of Versace?). She describes pettiness punctuated with direct truthfulness, intense relationships (often short-lived), and an appreciation of high culture and style. Observing this at a distance is Marion -- attractive, sought-after by many, but bitter and jealous because she (I will use this word from now on) has no passions, no sexual attraction to anyone, and no right to feel important.

But she does have a few friends, chiefly, Laurette -- an emotional yet steely lesbian who loves her (perhaps because she is so unresponsive and unattainable).

The middle of the novel dwells on their platonic relationship. Eventually Laurette seeks Marion's help in forcing the return of Laurette's former lover. During this long intrigue, the lover finally comes to beg Laurette ... not for forgiveness and a return to her arms ... but for help with an unwanted pregnancy.

To not entirely give the story away, Laurette softens, helps the lover have her baby (so the lover can return to her husband) and secrets it away in the countryside. This baby is the angel in the book's title, and is Marion's salvation, both as a passion and as a final definition of which gender she will adhere to.

The author's descriptions of Marion's bleak life when away from her friends bear comparison to Dr. Frankenstein's hideous creation,who was shunned by humankind. The monster wanted nothing more than sustenance and a recognition of his humanness, and so does Marion.

Note: the book's introduction by the translator is a short biography of the author, an interesting story in itself. Lucie Delarue-Mardrus was a prolific reporter, poet and novelist. The translator speculates as to which people in the novel are based on which of the author's friends.

(Reviewer: Valory Gravois) (Copyright ©1999 by Alchemist/Light Publishing)

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